Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Paging Mr. Darcy’ On The Hallmark Channel, About A Jane Austen Scholar Who Finally Lets Love In When She Meets Her Mr. Darcy

The Hallmark Channel is celebrating love this month with their Love-uary lineup of new movies (yes, I said Love-uary), including a batch of movies inspired by Jane Austen. In Paging Mr Darcy, an uptight English professor reluctantly attends an Austen convention where people dress up in Regency attire and impersonate famous characters. Initially quick to dismiss everyone there, including the man dressed as Mr. Darcy, she realizes that maybe it’s time to loosen up and not be so serious and scholarly about everything. In doing so, she overcomes her own pride and prejudices.

PAGING MR. DARCY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman on an airplane use a highlighter to illuminate the first, famous lines of Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Noticing the book she’s reading, the man next to her tries to flirt, but she rejects his advances.

The Gist: Eloise Cavendish (Mallory Jansen) is a Jane Austen scholar and professor. She’s snobbish and uptight and career-minded, which is why, when she’s asked to be the keynote speaker at a Jane Austen convention, she reluctantly agrees to do it, not for the love of Jane but for the opportunity to meet the head of the Princeton’s English department and try to get a job at the school. This convention is purely a way to get a new job there, and the fact that hundreds of people who love to cosplay Mansfield Park and pretend they live in the 18th century is just a loathsome distraction for Eloise.

When she’s picked up at the airport by her conference liaison Sam Lee (Will Kemp), a man dressed as Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, she’s mortified, but alas, he’s her ride, and she has to deal with this man in breeches cramming her suitcase into his Mitsubishi Mirage. It turns out that Sam is the nephew of Victoria Jennings, the head of Princeton’s English department. He proposes a plan to Eloise: he’ll help her get in his aunt’s good graces, if she will loosen up and play along and get into character at the convention, and also help block Crispin Crane, a suave former BBC actor who also wants the job at Princeton, but who is trying to flirt with Victoria to get it. (Sam’s aunt helped raised him, and he’s very protective of her.)

Eloise initially resists getting involved in any of the Austen-inspired activities at the convention, but pretty soon she loosens up, taking a bonnet-decorating class and accepting a period-specific dance lesson from Sam. It doesn’t take much for her to realize that these convention dorks aren’t so bad after all! When the convention’s caterer bails on a special picnic meal, she and Sam volunteer to throw a Regency-era meal plan together to help out, and little by little, they grow closer (and more tolerant of each other’s quirks).

Eloise’s time at the conference is interrupted by a visit from her sister Mia, who has just broken up with her boyfriend Rob, who tried to propose, but Mia broke things off because the proposal was unromantic and transactional. With both sisters able to observe one another, Eloise tries to counsel Mia and get Rob to realize he needs to be more romantic, and Mia tries to get Eloise realize that Sam is kind of the perfect guy for her and learn that having a career and finding love are not mutually exclusive.

Eventually, a series of misunderstandings (Eloise thinks that Mia is flirting with Sam, then Mia makes a fool of Eloise in front of Victoria) causes Eloise to think she lost both her man and her prospective job, but, not to worry, it takes but one commercial break for her everyone to come clean, reveal their real feelings, and share a big old happy ending.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The movie pulls references from the entire Austen oeuvre, comparing characters to Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Wickham, and plenty of other characters from Austen’s most famous works, while also referencing the fandom obsessed with the author. In that way it’s more like the Keri Russell movie Austenland than any one of Austen’s actual works.

Our Take: There are more than a few movies that have been inspired by Jane Austen’s work, movies that are either actual representations of her work, or just loosely inspired by them, it can feel tedious at times to watch what feels like the same story being told over and over. But in Paging Mr. Darcy, our protagonist Eloise, who is clearly meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth Bennet, does not want her life to be an Austen novel. Not at first, anyway.

When she first meets Sam, he’s dressed as Mr. Darcy and she really hates his whole shtick, but not for the same reasons that Elizabeth is turned off by Darcy. She really hates to silliness of dressing up, and will do anything not to be a protagonist in her own love story, it’s easier for her to shrink back and focus on her career, in solitude. Their personalities aren’t meant to mimic the characters in Austen’s work, but as the movie progresses. they do go through similar transformations, softening a bit and willing to meet each other in the middle. Is this movie great storytelling? Not really! But it is a loving homage to the legacy of Austen’s work and the many different aspects of her fandom, which seems like it’s at its peak these days.

Sex and Skin: What’s the opposite of sex and skin? Because that’s what you see in this movie.

Parting Shot: Eloise and Sam share a dance together at the ball that ends the conference, and they kiss on the dance floor.

Performance Worth Watching: Will Kemp, who plays Sam, the Mr. Darcy impersonator, does a great job at embracing his corny love of cosplay while also not making it silly or making fun of it. And when he’s just being “Sam” and trying to build a friendship/flirtation with Eloise, he actually becomes a vulnerable, realistic, fleshed out love interest. Though he’s a good Mr. Darcy, his actual self is the real leading man.

Memorable Dialogue: “They gave you your own personal Mr. Darcy?” Eloise’s sister Mia asks when she learns that Eloise’s is being trailed at the convention by a Mr. Darcy impersonator.

Our Call: STREAM IT! Paging Mr. Darcy adheres to that classic Hallmark formula where a woman resists love, gets a little too close to it that it scares her, creates some conflict to push it away, and then finally gives in. But Will Kemp’s Mr. Darcy is easy to love, and the rest of the details that fill in the story make the predictability of it all go down a little easier.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.